Presidential Timber?

First-term Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC) is often mentioned along with Sen. James Webb (D-VA) as the kind of hillbilly moderate-conservative Democrat who might do well on the national stage. Shuler, was the runner-up for the Heisman trophy at the U. of Tennessee in 1993. He later returned to school, finished his degree in psychology, started a successful real estate firm, and won election to Congress in 2006.

That's the good news. On the other hand, he was a complete bust in the NFL, listed by one count as the 17th biggest flop of the last quarter century in sports. This may have something to do with his reported Wonderlic IQ score of 16, which translates to about a 90.

Shuler replies that he didn't take the test seriously.

On the other other other hand, he named his children "Navy" and "Island," so maybe the Wonderlic score does say something about him.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

My review of Ross Douthat's and Reihan Salam's "Grand New Party"

Here's the opening of my book review in VDARE.com

Grand New Party Recycles Old (but Good!) VDARE.COM Ideas

Peter Brimelow writes: I know some readers get annoyed, but I was going to block off VDARE.COM’s home page again tonight with a new fundraising appeal. After a few hopeful days, our current campaign has once again stalled. And nothing else seems to work.

But then I got this piece from Steve Sailer, which is a case study in the influence of VDARE.COM writers. Steve, in his serene way, doesn’t seem to mind that these writers have ripped him off. He thinks it’s all for the good of the cause, and he’s right. But to do the pioneering work that causes the MSM to steal their ideas, our writers need to be paid. Please give generously.

By Steve Sailer

Two young Atlantic Magazine editors, both fairly conservative, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, have written a much-discussed book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. They argue, sensibly, that the Republican Party should focus on policies that strengthen families, financially and morally.

They observe:

"The American dream is ultimately a dream of home, of a place to call your own, earned and not inherited, and free from the petty tyranny of landlords, bureaucrats, and bankers. It's a dream of a country in which ownership is available to everyone, provided that they are willing to work for it, rather than being handed out on the basis of wealth or caste, brains or beauty."

Less poetically, they want the traditional high wage, cheap land America that Ben Franklin endorsed in his 1751 essay showing that "When Families can be easily supported, more Persons marry, and earlier in Life."

Of course, Republicans have been winning the family vote recently. In 2004, George W. Bush carried 25 of the top 26 states grouped in terms of white “total fertility rate” (number of babies per woman per lifetime), while John Kerry was victorious in the bottom 16.

But Republicans haven't actually delivered much to deserve the family vote, other than some good judicial nominees. What has the Bush Administration's policy, now endorsed by John McCain, of Invade the World/ Invite the World/ In Hock to the World done to build the human capital of average American families?

Douthat and Salam argue that the GOP's commitment to tax-cutting has hit electoral diminishing returns. It's no longer 1980, when the "animal spirits" of businessmen desperately needed to be jumpstarted by cuts in marginal tax rates.

Instead, they offer a long list of creative, if wonkish, reforms that Republican politicians might consider.

One I liked: their plan for breaking the higher education system's monopoly on credentialing. Most people go to college primarily to show future employers they are smart and hard-working:

"But making credentialing dependent on four years of college sets the barriers to entry so high that it limits competition and shuts out ambitious Americans who lack the time and money to acquire a four-year degree."

And, let's be frank, it's not just time and money. Plenty of Americans are smart enough to earn a decent living at a job for which they've been well-trained who aren't ever going to be smart enough to fulfill, say, Cardinal Newman's vision of what a well-rounded university-educated gentleman should know: hence today's enormous college dropout rate.

Ross and Reihan continue:

"A far fairer system would assign credentials on the basis of examinations, either national or state-level, that evaluate students on the basis of the actual skills they'll need to do their jobs well."

A benefit they don't mention: this would reduce the amount of time Americans at impressionable ages are exposed to leftist indoctrination on college campuses.

In general, the youthful authors aren't cynical enough to note that policies don't endure just on their merits—they have to grow their own constituencies.

For example, Ted Kennedy's 1965 and 1990 immigration laws have, as planned, harvested a heavily Democratic voting bloc that has scared off many would-be reformist politicians.

As a mirror image of Democratic immigration policy, Republicans should focus on programs that raise the marriage and birth rates among Republicans. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg noted, in 2004 when all else was held equal, being single made a voter 56 percent more likely to vote Democratic.

For example, Randall Parker has long emphasized the importance of getting competent people through the education system and into the workforce faster. "Turn kids into taxpayers sooner", Parker trenchantly suggests.

The partisan benefit to Republicans is that this gives their kind of people more years to get married and have more children.

[More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Drawing distinctions

A reader writes:

I was talking to a friend about [George W.] Bush vs. [Bill] Clinton, and we hit a bit of an impasse as to what would constitute the more impressive liar; would it be the skillful evasion and wielding of reality or Bush's total contempt for it? The artist of deceit or the man who constantly bludgeons obvious facts and says whatever the Hell he wants regardless of how ludicrously impossible or absurd?

Perhaps it is the case that Clinton is better at fooling all the people some of the time and Bush is better at fooling some of the people all the time. (He seems to have been put on this earth to prove that portion of the old adage to be undeniably true.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Local politics explained in one sentence

Politicians control developers, so developers control politicians.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Is Webb the solution to Obama's Scots-Irish problem?

Obama continues to do very well in Puritan-descended states, such as Oregon (with the exception of Massachusetts, where the bloom is off the David Axelrod / Deval Patrick rose), but yesterday he got annihilated in another Scots-Irish state, Kentucky. So, that makes Virginia Senator and hillbilly intellectual James Webb all the more plausible as a running mate. It would certainly be the ticket with the best writers on it in a long time.

On the other hand, the idea that Barack Obama might put Jim Webb on the path to being President someday is pretty funny, although probably not to Barack Obama. (What would Rev. Wright say?) So it probably won't happen.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Is religion the opiate of the Rust Belt masses?

One of the oddities of Obama's remarks about how Pennsylvania's bitter small town losers are taking refuge in conservative religion is how factually off base it is. The heartland of the flourishing conservative Protestantism in the U.S. is not the declining Rust Belt but the relatively fast-growing South.

What's distinctive about the Rust Belt religiously is what a sizable fraction voters, especially non-urbanites, are Catholics, whether Roman or Orthodox (as in the movie "The Deer Hunter," which, by the way, showed that back when the heavy industry towns of Pennsylvania were booming in the 1960s, guys still liked guns). Judging from enrollment at Catholic schools, which has been steadily declining despite the huge influx from Mexico, Catholicism is not succeeding at present at being a refuge for either the economic losers or winners.

For example, in the 2004 election, in which economically-declining Pennsylvania voted for Kerry while economically-growing Georgia voted for Bush, 35% of Pennsylvania voters were Catholics versus only 10% of Georgia voters. Only 13% of Pennsylvania voters identified themselves as white conservative Protestants vs. 26% of Georgia voters.

From the perspective of Obama and his San Francisco supporters, the problem with Pennsylvania and Ohio is not religion, but that, due to high union membership, there are still a lot of white blue collar guys who vote in the Democratic primaries. In contrast, Obama could sweep the South Carolina Democratic primary because, due to low unionization, almost all the white blue collar guys vote in the GOP primary.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

New York's new governor legally blind

Here's some interesting material on David L. Paterson, who apparently will be moving up to the governor's mansion in Albany:

Though his sight is limited, Lt. Gov. David Paterson walks the halls of the Capitol unaided. He recognizes people at conversational distance and can memorize whole speeches. He has played basketball, run a marathon, and survived 22 years in the backbiting culture of the state Capitol with a reputation as a man more apt to reach for an olive branch than a baseball bat.

If Spitzer resigns after being snared in a prostitution scandal, the biggest changes in a Paterson administration would probably revolve around style.

"He's a guy who had two handicaps: his blindness and his race. And he never made excuses for it," said civil rights leader Al Sharpton, a longtime friend. "He's the guy who has said, 'I have been in a minority group and a minority within a minority group. And I can make it, so don't give me no excuses.'"

Paterson, 53, is the son of former state Sen. Basil Paterson, a member of the storied "Harlem Clubhouse" that includes fellow Democrats U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel and former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. The elder Paterson was the first in the family to run for lieutenant governor in 1970. He lost, but later became New York's first black secretary of state.

David Paterson lost sight in his left eye and much of the sight in his right eye after an infection as an infant. Refusal to bow to his handicap came early. When New York City schools refused to let him attend mainstream classes, his parents established residency on Long Island, where they found a school that would let him go to regular classes.

"He was in the plays and on the stage, and required no assistance in maneuvering around stage and on the playground," said Dr. Casmiro Liotta, Paterson's former principal at the Fulton School.

Assemblyman Keith Wright, an old Harlem friend, remembers Paterson playing basketball and generally acting just like the other kids in the neighborhood. In 1999, Paterson completed the New York City Marathon.

After earning degrees from Columbia University and Hofstra Law School, he worked for the Queens district attorney's office and was elected to the state Senate in 1985 at the age of 31. He built a reputation for working hard in a place where not everyone does.

Though he can read for brief periods, Paterson usually has aides read to him. He also has developed the ability to remember entire speeches and policy arcana. State Sen. Neil Breslin recalled that he told Paterson his cell phone number once and he memorized it.

"He has one of the finest memories of anyone I've known," Breslin said.

Not surprisingly, considering that he can't really read for long periods of time, he failed the N.Y. Bar Exam. But he has to be pretty crafty to get where he's gotten. Especially because he can't really see small details of people's faces, like whether they're smiling sincerely or falsely when they promise to support you in some political deal. I bet he has remarkable voice analysis abilities.

And I bet he spends a lot of time talking to people. Being Lt. Governor can be a pretty undesirable position (I've known a former NY Lt. Gov. who must not have had terribly stiff competition), but perhaps Mr. Paterson had heard some hints that energetic young Mr. Spitzer just might not serve out his term.

The other blind politician I've heard about in recent years was British Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett, whose career was derailed by sexual and financial scandals.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The McCain Campaign Reality Show

From 1977-1981, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers met three times in the World Series. The Dodgers were the masters of the old style of media handling where arguments within the organization were not leaked to the press, and the organization presented a bland, unified front (unless something completely uncoverupable happened like the 1978 locker room fistfight between stars Steve Garvey and Don Sutton over the old spitballer taunting the handsome firstbaseman over his wife's affair with songwriter Marvin Hamlisch).

In contrast, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, and the other Yankees seemed to hash every disagreement out in the tabloids. As a youth at the time, this always struck me as unseemly, but the Yankees had hit upon the future of entertainment -- taking back office controversies public. By the 1980s, there were top disk jockeys, like Steve Dahl in Chicago, whose act largely consisted of on-air squabbling with station management. By the late 1990s, reality TV shows like Survivor and Big Brother became popular even though they consisted of little besides inside dirt on who was doing down whom.

Leon Hadar points to a Ryan Lizza New Yorker article that makes clear, without quite noticing it, that John McCain enjoys favorable press coverage because he runs his campaign as a sort of private reality show for the reporters important enough to be on the bus covering him:

"It is bracing to drop in on the McCain campaign after covering the overly managed productions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic candidates rarely speak to the travelling press. McCain not only packs his bus with reporters (whom he often greets with an affectionate “Hello, jerks!”) but talks until the room is filled with the awkward silence of journalists with no more questions. ... McCain and his aides openly discuss strategy, whether it’s Brooke Buchanan, McCain’s travelling press secretary, prepping him for a press conference (“ABC might ask about that”) or McCain discussing his targeting strategy for Tampa (“I thought we did a robo-call to tell people about Schwarzkopf”—referring to the endorsement by General Norman Schwarzkopf). ...

McCain’s open-access policy is partly strategic. After all, he is able to hammer talking points like any politician. (It’s not just his jokes that he repeats.) But, by engaging reporters in long, even substantive conversations, he also disarms them. The incentive to ask “gotcha” questions that feed the latest news cycle is greatly reduced, and the hours of exposure to McCain breed a relationship that inclines journalists to be more careful about describing the context of his statements.

This doesn't mean that reporters get anything important out of McCain about what he would actually do as President. He doesn't seem to say anything terribly interesting. He just gossips about horserace politics, like how much he hates Mitt Romney and how much he finds Ron Paul's supporters to be weird, and they find it fascinating.

Strikingly, the top-rated show of the decade, American Idol, follows the old-fashioned Dodger strategy. It completely ignores all the backstage conflicts among the performers and just shows them singing. Similarly, the Obama campaign keeps reporters away from both the candidate, and even his supporters, as much as possible: "The Obama campaign, like the Bush White House, prides itself on message discipline and tracks down leakers with a frightening intensity."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Calvin Ball

Six-year-old Calvin's favorite sport in the great comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is Calvin Ball. It's key feature is that Calvin gets to make up the rules as he goes along to favor whatever he does.

It's fun to play Calvin Ball in politics, too. For example, after the 1968 election, Sen. George McGovern got himself put in charge of changing the rules for how delegates would be selected for the 1972 Democratic convention. He instituted racial and gender quotas, plus more subtle changes, and -- whaddaya know? -- the delegates selected via George Ball rules nominated George McGovern in 1972. Similarly, in 2008 the Republicans played under John Ball rules (the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws that give the media more power) and -- whaddaya know? -- the winner was the media's favorite candidate, John McCain.

Ann Coulter has the economics of why we can't get Ronald Reagan-type candidates under the current campaign finance laws.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The secret of political success

The more we find out about Presidential candidates, the more it becomes clear that the secret to the success they've enjoyed so far in their careers is that in elections, somebody always has to win. This isn't like climbing Mt. Everest, where you either do it or you don't. Politics is graded on the curve, and the competition is only other politicians.

For example, for years we've been assured by the press that while Hillary Clinton may not be inspiring, as a manager she is Dwight Eisenhower, Jack Welch, and Stalin rolled into one. And yet, her 2008 campaign has been inept, with it becoming more obvious daily that she didn't have her staff prepare a realistic, detailed plan for what would need to be done in the later primaries if, perchance, she didn't knock out the competition on Super Tuesday, February 5.

Of the 16 years I've known about the existence of Hillary Clinton, I've spent the last 14 trying to ignore her, because she's a boring person. Has anyone ever heard her say anything interesting?

The more you look into her, the more the myth of her brilliance evaporates. For example, where does the famous description of her as "the smartest woman I've ever encountered" come from? Larry Summers? Lee Kuan Yew? Seymour Cray? Nah, it's a quote from Bill Clinton's mom, Virginia.

I'm far behind the curve on this, but I didn't know until now that, after graduating from Yale Law School, she failed the Washington D.C. bar exam. She wrote in her autobiography:

"I had taken both the Arkansas and Washington, D.C., bar exams during the summer, but my heart was pulling me towards Arkansas. When I learned that I had passed in Arkansas but failed in D.C., I thought maybe my test scores were telling me something. I spent a lot of my salary on my telephone bills and was so happy when Bill came to see me over Thanksgiving. We spent our time exploring Boston and talking about our future."

Lots of people fail the bar exam, but Washington D.C.'s isn't particularly hard, at least not compared to California's (which the former dean of the Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan, recently flunked). In July 2007, 75.5% of first time test takers passed the D.C. bar exam. The overall pass rate in her year was apparently 67%, so the pass rate for first-time takers (which is usually higher) was probably about the same. And that would put her in the bottom quarter. (Arkansas' test, which she passed, appears to be pretty easy.)

Failing the bar exam isn't so bad, except that the media has never explained why she should be President other than that she's so smart. But if she's not so smart, then her main claim to being President is the nationally embarrassing one that nobody is supposed to talk about: that she was married to the last President, that she's Imelda Marcos in sensible shoes.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Dept. of "Huh?"

While we've been concerned here with trivial matters, like why Princeton U. is blockading access to potential First Lady Michelle Obama's senior thesis until the day after the election, the ace professionals at Slate are on top of the crucial issue of the moment:

My search for the lost Huckabee tapes
Hanna Rosin

In her speculation about what might have been in the seldom-available tapes of sermons Mike Huckabee gave at his Baptist church in the 1980s, she concludes with this reason why he might be covering them up:

4. The Queasy Factor—In the one tape I did manage to get—bought on eBay from an enterprising Arkansan—Huckabee preaches on "The Practice of Patience." What could be more pleasant and innocuous, right? Not exactly. Huckabee is his trademark jovial self. He tells a couple of good stories, one about some urban farmers who mistook a watermelon for a mule egg, another about the time his father gave him his first bike—and it was a girl's bike. But all this is building up to a serious point. "How many times do we find ourselves on the surgery table of the Almighty God, who is trying to work His surgery to make us more like Christ, and we say 'God, let me out of here! Lord, don't touch me!' " he thunders towards the end. "It's not that we can't be Christians. The sad fact is most of us don't want to be enough to try our faith to the point of patience and perseverance."

It's one thing to know a presidential candidate was a pastor; that sounds worthy and leaderlike. But it's quite another to actually hear him work himself up into a lather about committing to Christ and not back it up with a joke.

Huh?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Hillary Byssheing

From commenter Bumperstickerist at JustOneMinute:

I met a pollster from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand, one in Texas...., one near Canton,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The electorate that mocked them, and the press that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
'My name is Hillarymandias,
Look on my resume and campaign fundraising, ye fellow Democrats, and despair!'
Nothing else remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Can Obama Really Win the White Vote?

On VDARE, I ask Can Obama Really Win the White Vote?

Those of you familiar with my enthusiasm for making predictions might be able to guess what conclusion I came up with.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

What's the deal with McCain's face?

Readers have pointed out to me that there's this ... thing on McCain's left cheek, and have wondered whether his skin cancer has come back.

I'm hoping it's just scar tissue left over from one of his two earlier struggles with melanoma. When my six cycles of chemotherapy for lymphatic cancer were over in 1997, the CAT scan showed that where once had been the tumor, which had been the size of a Polish sausage, there was something still there a little smaller than one of those cocktail weiners you eat from toothpicks at receptions.

"Give me a couple more blasts of chemo, Doc! I'm tough, I can take it," I whimpered.

"No, don't worry about it, it could be just scar tissue," he said.

"How can I not worry about it?"

But, it was just scar tissue. (Knock on wood.)

Still, it would be nice if the media occasionally explained what that thing on the Presidential candidate's face was. They write so many zillion words about the Presidential election, but so few of them seem to have much bearing on obvious questions we should be asking candidates.

I suppose I could call up from Google Images, say, fifty pictures of McCain's face over the last seven years to do a statistically valid study of whether or not the thing is changing in size (or if it occasionally shifts to the right side of his face, like Marty Feldman's hump in "Young Frankenstein"), but that would require me to look at 50 pictures of McCain's face, so, to hell with it.

Speaking of McCain's face, a reader writes:

And what is the deal with his cheeks? His face seems to have settled, like semi-melted jell-o, and he's got two little face love-handles bulging grossly, possibly anomalistically, to 3 and 9 o'clock. I write as an expert on jowls as mine form a perfect O-ring about my ever-diminishing head, as if I'm wearing a NASCAR tire.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Would McCain Go to the Mat with Obama?

Here's the opening of my new VDARE.com column on the election:

Will McCain Go to the Mat with Obama?

By Steve Sailer

The collapse of long-time frontrunner Rudy Giuliani allowed rival invade-the-world invite-the-world candidate Sen. John McCain to squeeze out plurality wins in winner-take-all primaries, while his hapless foes were winning races where delegates were allotted proportionally. The Mainstream Media (MSM) has now anointed McCain as the presumptive Republican nominee.

Yet Republicans clearly aren't happy about McCain's flukish luck. That was shown by his dismal performance on Saturday, February 9th, the first election day after Super Tuesday. Even with only Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul left in the race, Senator McMentum received just 42 percent of the vote in Louisiana, 26 percent in Washington and 24 percent in Kansas.

The odds still favor McCain scraping across the line, due to his early windfall of delegates. But I would guesstimate that, even without a Huckabee miracle comeback, there's about a 5%-15% chance that McCain won't actually be running for President when Election Day finally grinds around—nine long months from now.

Does anybody have a contingency plan? One may be needed, because McCain is 71 years old. He has twice been struck by cancer—in 1993 and in 2000, when he underwent a 9-hour operation.

And McCain doesn't have the most placid, reticent of personalities in an era that has made crucifying white males for "gaffes" into a national spectator sport (James Watson, Don Imus, Trent Lott, etc. etc. etc.)

At this point, responsible immigration-restrictionist opinion-molders, such as John O'Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, and Randall Parker, tend to favor a Democratic victory as the least awful outcome, especially a win by the uninspiring Hillary Clinton rather than by the dangerously charismatic Barack Obama. They argue that McCain would muffle GOP Congressional resistance to a revived Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill. They think a Democratic president would galvanize Republican opposition, as did Bill Clinton when he defeated George I, leading to a GOP Congressional victory in 1994.

But I'm in no mood to be responsible. I'm looking for only one thing from Election 2008: entertainment. I want to see mud slung everywhere.

Obama currently leads McCain in head-to-head polls by 7-8 points. So I'm going to offer McCain a little unsolicited advice on what he'd have to do to win.

I don't, however, expect McCain to take my suggestions. I expect him to choose to lose, in the politically correct manner that will preserve his image in the eyes of his Main Stream Media acolytes, rather than to do what it takes to get elected President.

[More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Affordability of Family Formation

The February 11 issue of The American Conservative, the one with John McCain and his crypto-slogan "Invade the World / Invite the World" on the cover, features my long article "Value Voters," which sums up my theory of how the affordability of family formation drives the Red State -Blue State divide. I've published it in bits and pieces over the years in AmCon, VDARE, and my blog, but I finally had the space to lay it out fully. It's not online.

Here's the opening:

No matter who wins the 2008 presidential election, pundits will afterwards hypothesize feverishly about why the country is so divided into vast inland expanses of Red (Republican) regions versus thin coastal strips of Blue (Democratic) metropolises. Yet, judging from 2000 and 2004, few will stumble upon the engine driving this partisan pattern, even though the statistical correlations are among the highest in the history of the social sciences.

The Republicans lost the popular vote in 2000 while advocating a "humble" foreign policy, and won in 2004 while defending a foreign policy that Napoleon might have found bombastic. Yet, all that happened from 2000 to 2004 was that virtually every part of the country moved a few points toward the Republicans. The relative stability of this Red-Blue geographic split suggests that more fundamental forces are at work than just the transient issues of the day.

Neither Jane Austen nor Benjamin Franklin, however, would have found the question of what drives the Red-Blue divide so baffling. Unlike today's intellectuals, they both thought intensely about the web tying together wealth, property, marriage, and children. Thus, they probably would not have been surprised that a state's voting proclivities are now dominated by the relative presence or absence of what I call "affordable family formation."

First-time readers of Pride and Prejudice frequently remark that Austen's romance novels are, by American standards, not terribly romantic. She possessed a hard-headed understanding of how in traditional English society, wedlock was a luxury that some would never be able to afford, an assumption that often shocks us in our more sentimental 21^st century.

Economic historian Gregory Clark's recent book, A Farewell to Alms, quantified the Malthusian reality under the social structure acerbically depicted in Austen's books. The English in the 1200-1800 era imposed upon themselves the sexual self-restraint that pioneering economist Thomas Malthus famously (but belatedly) suggested they follow in 1798. By practicing population control, the English largely avoided the cycles of rapid growth followed by cataclysmic famines that plagued China, where women married universally and young. The English postponed marriage and children until a man and woman could afford the accouterments suitable for a respectable married couple of their class.

In the six centuries up through Austen's lifetime, Clark found, English women didn't marry on average until age 24 to 26, with poor women often having to wait until their 30s to wed. And 10 to 20 percent never married. Judging from the high fertility of married couples, contraceptive practices appear to have been almost unknown in England in this time, yet, merely three or four percent of all births were illegitimate, demonstrating that rigid pre-marital self-discipline was the norm.

Remarkably, a half century before Malthus's gloomy and Austen's witty reflections on life and love in crowded England, Ben Franklin had pointed out that in his lightly populated America, the human condition was more relaxed and happy. In his insightful 1751 essay, Observations concerning The Increase of Mankind, Franklin spelled out, with an 18^th Century surfeit of capitalization, the first, nonpartisan half of the theory of affordable family formation:

"For People increase in Proportion to the Number of Marriages, and that is greater in Proportion to the Ease and Convenience of supporting a Family. When Families can be easily supported, more Persons marry, and earlier in Life."

He outlined the virtuous cycle connecting the Colonies' limited population, low land prices, high wages, early marriage, and abundant children:

"Europe is generally full settled with Husbandmen, Manufacturers, &c. and therefore cannot now much increase in People… Land being thus plenty in America, and so cheap as that a labouring Man, that understands Husbandry, can in a short Time save Money enough to purchase a Piece of new Land sufficient for a Plantation, whereon he may subsist a Family; such are not afraid to marry …"

Franklin concluded: "Hence Marriages in America are more general, and more generally early, than in Europe."

The Industrial Revolution broke the tyranny of the Malthusian Trap over food, but the supply of and demand for land never ceased to influence decisions to marry and have children. As America's coastal regions filled up, affordability of family formation began to differ sharply from state to state (disparities partially masked over the last few years by subprime mortgages and other financial gambits). CNN reported in 2006:

"More than 90 percent of homes in [Indianapolis] were affordable to families earning the median income for the area of about $65,100. In Los Angeles, the least affordable big metro area, only 1.9 percent of the homes sold were within the reach of families earning a median income for the city of $56,200."

When I lived in the Midwest, from age 24 to 34 I attended numerous weddings, but as my social circle matured, the invitations naturally dried up. Yet, when I moved back to my native, but now much more expensive, Los Angeles in 2000, I suddenly started being invited to weddings again. Like male characters in a Jane Austen novel, four of my seven closest friends from my high school class of 1976 got married and bought houses for the first time in their early forties.

Similarly, the cost of childrearing varies more across the country than ever before. A study of Census data by the New York Times found that "Manhattan’s 35,000 or so white non-Hispanic toddlers are being raised by parents whose median income was $284,208 a year in 2005."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Heroes of accomplishment v. heroes of suffering

Greg Cochran points out a profound change in American culture: from celebrating and promoting heroes of accomplishment to doing the same for heroes of suffering. Consider two war heroes-turned politicians. Dwight Eisenhower got the 1952 GOP nomination because of his accomplishments even though he didn't suffer much for them -- he was never in combat in his life. But organizing D-Day and managing the Anglo-American coalition suggested he had what it takes to perform well the day-to-day work of the Presidency during a particularly scary part of the Cold War. In contrast, John McCain is likely to get the 2008 GOP nomination in large measure because of his tremendous suffering during the Vietnam War, although he never accomplished all that much in the military.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are granted Honorary Heroes of Suffering status because of their being non-white males. Moreover, Hillary attained Presidential Timberhood by suffering through her husband's public infidelity.

Similarly, Obama's autobiography is pure emo rock: Yes, I know, sitting on the beach in Hawaii smoking dope may sound like a pretty soft life to you, but it was hell to me because of my"story of race and inheritance." The drugs were just “something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind . . .”

So, he had to go Suffer with His People on the South Side of Chicago for four years. Sure, he didn't accomplish anything in those four years, other than once helping Mau-Mau the all-black Chicago Housing Authority into removing some asbestos from a housing project, but that's not the point. The point is that he suffered.

In contrast, Mitt Romney, who, among other accomplishments (none of them D-Day scale, of course), saved the 2002 Winter Olympics (which by the way, were much better run than the embarrassing 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta), proved so unpopular that he dropped out today.

Perhaps the turning point was John F. Kennedy, whose main wartime feat of command was the almost unique one of getting his PT boat sliced in half by a Japanese warship.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The 15% and 50% rule of black politicians

A reader writes in regards to Obama's performance:

The late Alan Baron used to have the "15 and 50% rule" for cities. If a city was at least 50% black, it would almost certainly have a black mayor (Detroit, DC, Atlanta, etc.). If a city was less than 15% black, it MIGHT have a black mayor because a small minority wouldn't create all that much tension. (LA [where Tom Bradley won five elections from 1973 onward] and Seattle fit this mold).

On the other hand, if a city was between 16 and 49% black, they probably would NOT have a black mayor. The reasons were simple: at say, 30% black, the community was big to stir up a backlash, but not strong enough to win a majority. New York is the classic example of this at 30% black. David Dinkins has been their first and only black mayor. [Similarly, Harold Washington, who died 20 years ago, was Chicago's first and last black mayor.]

Obama is winning the white voters in states where no one is scared of blacks (North Dakota!). He's also winning the Deep South states where black Democrats outnumber white Democrats. But in the big states where blacks are mixed in competition with Catholic labor voters, Asians and Hispanics, he's struggling.

Alan Baron would have predicted this!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A more cynical interpretation

I pointed out earlier that, according to the LA Times, Obama's pandering to the illegal alien vote flopped in California because ... illegal aliens can't vote.

A reader demurs:

As regards the notion that Obama's direct advocacy of driver's licenses for illegal aliens 'flopped', you are right in every detail, but missed the big picture.

Obama was not aiming at 'hispanics'. Obama was aiming at the elites who lust after cheap labor over all other things. And it paid off big time. Money and favorable corporate press coverage is raining down on Obama, and Hilary is starting to run out of resources...

Why do you think the big money fell over itself to bring McCain back from the dead? Because McAmnesty will keep labor cheap.

Follow the money. The balance of supply and demand for labor is the dominant factor in setting wages and profits. I think Obama just outsmarted Hilary.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Obama's pro-illegal alien ploy flops

In the California primary, Hillary won big among Latinos in California by running as a tax and spend Democrat, while Obama ran as a pro-illegal immigrant. The LA Times article says:

The Obama campaign, by contrast, aired Spanish-language radio ads promoting his support for issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. That was a "classic Northeastern assumption" that licenses were the primary concern of Latinos, according to Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC.

"It's not. I think he would have had much more traction on issues like education, or the loss of jobs . . . issues that resonate with Latino homeowners," Pachon said.

Yes, Obama is from the Midwest not the Northeast, but in California, everything beyond Las Vegas is considered "back East."

The thing that people back East like Obama are always forgetting is that illegal immigrants aren't supposed to vote. Granted, a few do vote illegally, but most wouldn't vote even if it was legal. They have more than enough drama in their private lives.

Hispanics who can vote mostly don't really care much about illegal immigrants. They might want legal immigration expanded so they can sponsor more close relatives, but illegals are a pain in the neck -- some third cousin shows up and wants to sleep on your couch for a year until he gets settled.

But most politicians and journalists don't know that because the "experts" they talk to about Hispanics -- such as Hispanic political consultants -- all want more illegal immigrants because it makes them seem more important. They want to be the "voice" of not 45 million people but, of 90 million or 180 million. Think how much business they would get then!

On the other hand, maybe all this dissection of the California voting is premature. Do we even really know who won the California primaries? I noticed this rather disturbing paragraph in the Thursday morning LA Times article:

"Stephen Weir, head of the state association of elections officials, estimated Wednesday that up to 2 million ballots remained uncounted. An additional 450,000 provisional ballots, filed when there is a dispute at a polling place, were also uncounted, according to Weir, the clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County. Elections officials have until March 4 to complete their tally, on which rests the division of party delegates."

Up to two million uncounted votes?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer